Iranian Commander Denies Report of US Drone Overflights

TEHRAN (FNA)- A top Iranian military commander denied a US news report that the CIA has been successfully sending spy drones over Iran over the past three years, and added that Iranian drones have repeatedly flown over American ships in the Persian Gulf and have taken photos of them.

"No unmanned or manned (surveillance) aircraft has entered Iran's air space" apart from one US stealth drone that was captured last December, Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Air Defense Command told the Islamic republic news agency.  He was reacting to a story in The Washington Post newspaper last weekend that alleged the Central Intelligence Agency sent its first surveillance drone over Iran three years ago with "never even a ripple" detected in Iran's air defenses.  The report claimed that CIA drones subsequently scoured dozens of sites in Iran, making hundreds of passes over facilities before the stealth drone - an RQ-170 model - crashed inside Iran's borders in December.  But Esmaili was quoted as saying: "No surveillance unmanned aircraft has passed over Iran, and published photos were (taken) by satellite systems."  He said "you witnessed what happened" when the captured RQ-170 tried to make its flight in December.  Meantime, the Iranian commander said that "drones operated by the IRGC and the (Iranian) military have flown over American ships (in the Persian Gulf) and have taken photos of them". (FNA)